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Maths Week Scotland 2022 - online workshops

Dates
Monday, September 26, 2022 - 10:00 to Friday, September 30, 2022 - 11:00
Location
Free Online
Maths Week Scotland logo

Maths Week Scotland is a celebration of the importance of maths for all ages in our everyday lives. With free workshops and events, both online and in person, there is something for everyone, from money challenges, coding, geometry, and all things numerical.

The Open University's Mathematics and Statistics team have created a week of online webinars as part of Maths Week Scotland, to challenge and educate. They will be broadcast on the OU STEM YouTube links below.

Monday 26 September, 10:00- 11:00
Code Breaking and cryptography
A whistle stop tour of historical codes. You will learn to make and break codes and see how cryptography is used today.

Tuesday 27 September, 10:00-10:30
Playing Sudoku on graphs 
In this session we will place Sudoku puzzles in the context of a long tradition of network colouring problems. Then we will see how we can play Sudoku on a general graph and find some results on how hard such a puzzle can be.

Tuesday 27 September, 11:00-12:00
Fallacies in Statistics 
Do you know how important a role mathematics and statistics played in World War 2? You might have heard about Alan Turning and codebreaking, but do you know how Abraham Wald saved the allied planes by pointing out a statistical fallacy? Statistics can often appear counterintuitive, so please come and be challenged in your mathematical. 

Wednesday 28 September, 10:00-11:00
Tilings and Patterns 
We will explore the fascinating world of periodic and Aperiodic patterns, first by investigating regular tessellations, before creating your own Islamic geometric inspired artwork, and finally by discovering the hidden world of aperiodic tilings.

Thursday 29 September, 10:00-10:30
Principle of least action 
What is the quickest route to go from A to B? Most often it is just a straight line. However, when you are on a terrain, with different elevation, relative to the sea level, the quickest route might not be a straight line anymore. The mathematics of variational calculus allows us to calculate this optimal path. It turns out that electrons and light also follow the most optimal path to go from A to B. This is called the principle of least action, which forms the foundation of modern physics.

Friday 30 September, 10:00-10:45
An equation for a beautiful sea ice mosaic
Vast labyrinthine ponds on the surface of melting Arctic Sea ice are key players in the climate system and ocean ecology. In this conversation with hands-on activities, we discuss how mathematics would help to explore the complex boundaries of melt ponds to unveil a beautiful mosaic of melting ice.

For more information on the other events and activities, visit the Maths Week Scotland website. You can also follow the week on Twitter with the hashtag #MathsWeekScot.

There is a wide range of free learning about Maths on the OU's free learning site OpenLearn.

Contact us

If you are interested in potentially holding an event with us please email: 
Scotland-Marcomms@open.ac.uk